Joker
by Aiko Isari
Summary: [XW] AU, slight time travel. "The fitting place for me is the demon's chair, right?" Kiriha woke to hell after dying. For one reason or another, he has to find a way to recreate heaven.


_**A/N:**_Hello! I was hemming and hawing over this one challenge for a while but here at last is my entry, for the Novel With Prompts challenge, for the prompt "Knowing How", as well as for the character spin-off challenge with the character being Taiki, the spinoff about him being revealed over time. Including the prologue and epilogue, this should hopefully be about twenty-six chapters.

This story will have alternate character interpretation and out-of-character behavior, as well as possible time-travel elements, references to recent anime (one of these being Kill la Kill and none of which are necessary to enjoy the story), displays of violence,mentions of past graphic violence, past character death, and a few other things that will come up as the story goes on. I will keep this rated T because in the forseeable future there is no content that, barring trigger warnings, will be described as an M rating worthy story.

Kiriha/Taiki is the main pairing for this story but it's rather unorthodox. I warn for a lack of fluff.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.

* * *

_**Prologue: "So, how did it go again?"**_

He died by gunshot.

No, not a bullet. There wasn't enough blood. He didn't scream enough. The pain would have been too brief, though the shock was about the same.

How did he die, exactly?

He had to remember. It was important. It had to do with, had to matter about-

Something.

A deeply curled, bloodlusting something. Like fire? Yes. No. Not fire, blood. Ashes instead of fire. Pride. Broken pride. Was it red? Or was it blue? No, it was black. Black with maybe a few grey shards. Like a sword. A sword of evil.

Evil? Was that right?

Or maybe it was good. A kind of good with the colors inverted and without any lines but still a lot of-

Blood.

Why was the blood so important? Was it his? Theirs? Whose?

What did it matter? He was dead. Dead and dying and alive at the same time. The laughter was a child's adult imitation, the best the could do without actually doing much of anything. Thoughts were hazy, weak with fog. It hurt to think them, to feel through the slices in skin, sliced like he was nothing more than butter or cheese, made with a tapping out like the beat of a conductor's baton.

His skin was ripped and tattered about like a flayed man's cries and it hurt and hurt and ached but _how did he die?_ He couldn't answer his own question and there was no one about who could answer it for him because the place he was in had no people and he had no eyes to see them with.

And someone was gouging ice picks into his ears to reach his brain and it needed to stop now.

But it wasn't stopping.

"What's wrong, what's wrong, what's wrong?"

He was supposed to be dead so why was someone here? Why was he here in the place where the dead were supposed to be? Why was there even pain if there wasn't supposed to be?

"I'm here at your funeral," he heard the other say, laughing in each syllable, bouncing with scarlet petals falling from his skin. He can feel them fall, imagine them decorating the dead body he was still inside.

The horror clutched him then. He was trapped in his own rotting-

"Oh, what do you _care_, you can't feel anything!"

He couldn't feel it but now he knew and somehow that made it some kind of blasphemous attemptThe bile rose with the claustrophobia and it didn't go anywhere-

"You're too sen_si_tive!"

_That's rich, coming from you._

There was more laughter, which was now changing from rough childish glee to slower snickering, light giggling, not insane, only mild and muted and more like its owner. The sound soon, or rather, out of nowhere, came to a dead halt, creating a silence made of mist. He wished he could see why, could hear.

The person he could not see, who he knew but was frightened to name, then answered him. "They're singing your praises now, Aonuma Kiriha," they said, smiling, as they had to be because there was hardly ever a moment where the person did not smile. It was a Cheshire's relief on human skin. "It really does seem to only happen when people are dead, doesn't it? They're crying for you. They miss you. They love you."

"Isn't it grand?"

He wanted to hurl a curse word but couldn't. His mouth was cemented, limbs held down by red spiders and white lilies. Held down by flower petals and the hands that weren't there but felt like they were stroking his neck.

"You only realize these things when a person dies, don't you? Whenever people mourn, all they think of are regrets and missed chances. You must hate that. Your father cursed you about it even after he died." There was a bout of quiet and now he could hear other voices, other murmurs, some prayers, others soothing regrets and miserable words.

All for him, selfishly and selflessly displayed for him to not be able to hear. If he was dead, he shouldn't know these things about people's hearts that were spilling out like his blood had when his heart was carved out.

"Oh, _now _he remembers."

Taiki kissed his lips, warmth across chilled skin and a push down into the messy currents of the sea. "As always, you're late to the party, Ki-ri-ha."

...

He awoke in a flat with more space than he needed and not enough personal effects to feel at-home in. Nearly bare walls with photo frames tipped over and dusty, he almost sneezed as he caught his breath from the sudden burst from sleep.

No, not sleep. He had died. He remembered now. Kiriha brushed at the blond strands of hair at his ears, breathing rough pants as he tried to slow down his suddenly beating heart. He shivered a moment, listening to the roar of his blood in his ears before it began to slow and he opened his eyes more fully. As more of his cognitive processes focused, Kiriha cursed himself for not looking around. He should have known better. Danger could be from anywhere, anytime.

As his brain was slowly starting to grasp once again, from anyone.

He lowered his hand from his red shirt and his vision briefly blurred into darkness and scarlet soaked fingers and soft, sweet singing.

_You shouldn't have followed me this far._

Singsong, sugary, something being spun in the air like a baton, a metallic, sharp baton. His own voice saying disbelief in too many phrases, angry, betrayed.

The room spiraled into focus once more and Kiriha stumbled to stand, blue eyes watering, skin feeling like it was smoking. Unconsciously, his hands clutched at his abdomen, as if he was wounded and numbed instead of merely disoriented.

"Bathroom," he croaked to the empty apartment as he limped in that direction. His fingers brushed against dirt that he must not have gotten to clean off of the doorway as he limped forward. Nothing hurt, or he thought nothing did, but after having been in the Digital World for as long as he had been, as many times as he had been, pain stopped resonating and making sense to the point that he had almost set his hand on fire boiling water when suffering a cold. So he had to check for a wound, for all ten fingers and ten toes and verify that the organs seemed to be in their right places.

After all, he vividly remembered that he had died, not entirely how it had worked out that way. He just knew it had because he never woke without some awareness, and never on the floor. He tasted cotton in his mouth as the spray struck the bathroom tiles with a squeak.

The shower would help him. It had to.

_"You're trying to save me because you love me, isn't that right. Aonuma Kiriha? Well, challenge accepted!"_

Because he knew there was a reason.

"_I want you to try and save me."_

Kiriha barely pulled up the toilet seat before vomiting, most of it spit. There was a clattering on the floor of something resembling plastic, but he couldn't look at it, at the lifeless screen.

"_It's not as easy as it looks, is it?"_

Taiki had killed him.

So why was he still here?


End file.
